Trinity University Spanish professor Rita Urquijo-Ruiz takes the Oath of Allegiance during a citizenship ceremony held Thursday Jan. 31 2013 at Laurie Auditorium on the campus.

Photo By Edward A. Ornelas/Express-News

Trinity University Spanish professor Rita Urquijo-Ruiz stands during the national anthem after taking the Oath of Allegiance during a citizenship ceremony held Thursday Jan. 31 2013 at Laurie Auditorium on the campus.

Photo By Edward A. Ornelas/Express-News

Trinity University Spanish professor Rita Urquijo-Ruiz speaks after taking the Oath of Allegiance during a citizenship ceremony held Thursday Jan. 31 2013 at Laurie Auditorium on the campus.

Almost 400 people took an oath of citizenship Thursday at Laurie Auditorium.

Young and old, male and female, rich and poor and from disparate corners of the world, they vowed to support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States.

Many were misty-eyed with big lumps in their throats, while family members and friends snapped pictures.

Then Rita Urquijo-Ruiz, a Trinity University associate professor of Spanish, stepped forward and delivered an uncharacteristically rousing call to action in which she asked her new fellow Americans to become “the ideal United States citizen that exists in each of us.”

“Be proud,” she said in congratulating them, “and let's get started.”

Such optimism might well-serve national leaders who this week announced plans to make comprehensive immigration reform legislation a reality.

On Monday, a group of Democratic and Republican U.S. senators introduced a framework for reform that would secure borders, allow for temporary agricultural workers and, in its most debated provision, establish a path toward citizenship for an estimated 11 million immigrants living in the United States illegally.

On Tuesday, President Barack Obama followed suit and pushed for quick legislative action.

Quick, however, doesn't seem to be the right adjective for anything related to U.S. immigration.

It isn't how most immigrants remember their arduous, sometimes dangerous journeys to the United States, nor how they made their complicated, expensive quest to naturalization.

For Urquijo-Ruiz, 41, it took more than 25 years. She arrived at 16 in 1987 with a one-month visa, leaving behind a widowed mother with 11 other children.

She said there was simply too little to round around, and she wanted, more than anything, to get an education.

She said she was lucky that her life has been “populated with angels” who made so many sacrifices on her behalf.

One Mexican American family in California offered her a home while she went to high school.

A month after getting there, she said she did what many immigrants have done before her, overstayed her visa “forever, basically.”

She later was unofficially adopted by her high school math teacher's family, as she earned degrees, assisted by a short-lived California law that provided funds to undocumented students.

The whole time she was fearful “in every cell of my being” of being detected and deported. Like many immigrants, however, she hid in plain sight.

A campus activist, Urquijo-Ruiz was the one who had to leave a rally or protest the moment police arrived.

In her toughest moment, her mother died of cancer while she was miles away. She only got to see her twice after leaving.

By 1996, Urquijo-Ruiz applied for permanent residency.

Today, the Trinity professor is grateful for the opportunities the United States has afforded her. She holds three degrees, and last year the University of Texas Press published her first book, “Wild Tongues: Transnational Mexican Popular Culture.”

She's hopeful about this week's renewed call for immigration reform legislation. “I'm very excited that we're even having the conversation,” she said.

But she hopes everyone involved in the debate doesn't demonize immigrants in the process.

“A lot of people are misinformed about what immigrants do for this country,” she said. “We have to make them see the humanity in every individual.”

A storyteller at heart, Urquijo-Ruiz also told her fellow new citizens a story.

“A wise man once told me that most stories have two plot lines: either someone goes on a journey, or a stranger arrives at a new place,” she said. “Of course, this is the same story but seen from two different perspectives.”

“Eventually it becomes clear that both the town and the stranger can benefit greatly from each other's presence,” she said.

“Today, we become the townspeople whose duty will be to welcome other travelers into our community, our nation,” she said.